Archive

Quotes

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850